i knew him but his hair was white and mostly gone, his cheeks were porcelain; he lay there like a doll, thin and sulky. twenty years had passed like a blink. in my moment of reverence while walking past the casket, a line moving through a pulley, i noticed a coin between his first and middle finger. a fee for the boatman but which boatman would jesus use? even this destructive man, in his final months, got scared of dying.

with the bottom half of the casket closed, it was easy to imagine him stretched out, his toes tipped to touch the pillowy walls to leave indents in the softness, though he had no legs: amputated when i was a child in a boat accident, and only saved because his neighbors thought he was a cow in distress. the irony is, now, he was being trapped in a small padded room, abandoned, no hoarse yelling; no escape.

my grandfather’s lips pursed, quiet, paused. he wasn’t gray. i always remember the dead as gray, & always startled when they look alive. his skin did not blend with the casket as much as it bruised the white satin inlay—the embroidered birds, flying away.

my father is more ghost; he stands there invisible. the people part down the aisle, moving around him; on each side someone oscillates a right shoulder, a left; left; right. they move their feet in a grief walk. he stands there in a battle with his emotions, trying to figure out why the pain of losing someone so unaccountable but close proximity yet far away at the same time, is eluding him, but he is there in the enormous room & by the end of service it is as small as the casket & again, he is alone.